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Nature imposes limitations on humanity, and there are clearly consequences, almost always not good, when they are exceeded. This basically explains the difference between conservatives and liberals. Liberals seek personal liberation through unlimited freedom, therefore they want to eliminate all restraints and limits on the "pursuit of happiness." They use government to achieve those ends, and they vehemently oppose religious and conservative doctrine that advocates personal restraint, tradition, and obligation as the only path to authentic health and happiness.
Many people accuse the Bible of being God's buzzkill that takes all the fun out of life with its moral dictates of personal restraint. Where the liberals and secular humanists go wrong is twofold. One, those moral dictates are voluntary, but if they are followed, one will have for the most part a safe and secure life. And two,
since liberals and atheists don't want to be told what to do with their lives, the logical conclusion to a life without restrictions is a life of hedonism leading to self-destruction, such as alcoholism, drug abuse, and the myriad of addictions that infect all of society. Addiction by definition is lack of self-restraint that leads to the inability to stop a destructive activity.Irving Kristol, one of the original neoconservatives, touches on this in his essay "
Countercultures: Past, Present and Future":
Secular rationalism looks at things differently. It is essentially contemptuous of the very idea of tradition. It also lacks a central principle of virtue. Instead, it proposes a whole set of virtues-toleration, pluralism, relativism: the "liberal" virtues-which, one might say, construct a supermarket of possible good and decent lives, with no discrimination permitted. This is a prescription for moral anarchy, which is exactly what we are now experiencing. And there is no way that moral anarchy can pass for moral progress.
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